


the only kind of steady i believe in

by catsinouterspace



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23963434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsinouterspace/pseuds/catsinouterspace
Summary: Inquiring about one’s daemon is considered rude to begin with so inquiring about the lack of one must be so much ruder, and asking someone about their lack of a daemon when they'd spent the better part of a century in a foreign torture lab....well, that couldn’t be anything good.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 9
Kudos: 68
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	the only kind of steady i believe in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toucanpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toucanpie/gifts).



Nobody asks Bucky about his daemon. Inquiring about one’s daemon is considered rude to begin with so inquiring about the lack of one must be so much ruder, and asking someone about their lack of a daemon when they'd spent the better part of a century in a foreign torture lab....well, that couldn’t be anything good.

Steve's daemon was a bitzer of a dog, with stubby legs, a wiry coat and a tough build. It looked like someone had grabbed every sort of terrier and mashed it together. So ordinary in its appearance it blended right in with the other dogs loping around the park with their owners. It's ability to keep up with its super soldier fast partner, however, gave it away; stubby legs moving impossibly fast as it zoomed around the lake that Steve preferred to spend his mornings at.

"You know Zagter can smell Nominare, right?" Steve feigned nonchalance as he asked the question, stirring a lump of sugar into his coffee, Zagter sitting at his feet.

Bucky felt a stiffening in his body that wasn't his own. _It's Steve._

_He left us._

_He didn’t know._

Nominare didn’t argue further but Bucky could feel his daemon’s discontent settling in his stomach.

The animals that daemons eventually settled into were representations of their human partners. Steve's made perfect sense. Loyal. Stubborn to a fault. Smart. And a very large dose of little dog syndrome, even if most people wouldn’t say that about the now formidably sized man anymore. Although the public was disappointed that Steve’s daemon wasn't a bald eagle, Bucky could not think of an animal more fitting to his friend than the little dog.

Intelligent. Inquisitive. Curious. All words befitting of a rat. Words that once worked as a descriptor for the animal nestled in the sleeve of Bucky's jacket. Not really fitting for the scared creature it was now.

Bucky had been inundated with therapists once Steve and Sam had got a hold of him. He'd grown quite fond of Emily, the current woman he saw twice a week. She helped him slowly begin to turn the world form somewhere terrifying, helped him stop seeing every single person as a potential threat, helped him stop seeing _himself_ as a potential threat.

He's daemon on the other hand didn't have such a support system. In fact, he spent most of Bucky’s therapy sessions telling Bucky about how Emily was wrong, that she didn’t know anything about the real world. The real world, Bucky was beginning to learn, as he let Steve into his apartment, after double and triple checking that Steve was indeed who was waiting for him on the other side of the door, was more about too sweet lattes, just right tarts and heart melting smiles from a man he'd missed for seventy years. Even if for many of those years Bucky hadn’t always been aware, he was missing him.

Nominare wasn't in agreement. Hydra had caught Bucky once, they could do it again. Hell, Hydra had managed to gain control of the biggest organisation in America. The one Steve had served.

It made Bucky's heart ache. On one hand the blond made his heart feel all stupid and whoosh, when Steve smiled at him, he could be eighteen again, a time when he could count the number of days he had spent outside of Brooklyn on one hand. But Bucky had to concede that his daemon had a point. Steve had been wrong.

For all his wonders, the blond could not know everything.

He hadn’t known Bucky had been alive.

 _He didn’t even bother to make sure._ Nominare reminded him.

It had been so, so cold. Bucky had never been that cold before. The kind of cold where your body got it all twisted and you feel like you’ve been plunged into a fire. He had his gun. A short pistol, nothing like the long-ranged weapons he was so talented with. Still it would be hard to miss his target when it was his own face.

He couldn’t do this again; he’d spent months in one of Hydra’s camps and he’d rather be dead than do it again. The fall should have killed him, but maybe something they’d done to him had worked. He thought the rumours of super soldier serum were bullshit but Steve was living proof.

 _Steve._ Nominare whispered the name. Too frozen by the cold to contribute much else to Bucky’s thoughts.

Bucky had thought he was delirious when Steve had found him in Hydra’s camp. His best friend who should be stuck somewhere in Brooklyn sifting through pieces of metal, was now here saving him. And also, for some inexcusable reason he had transformed into a man straight from the cover of a muscle magazine. As far as torture inspired delirious fever dreams went it was a pretty good one. But it hadn’t been a dream after all. And back then Steve hadn’t a clue where he was or that he was in trouble.

 _He’ll come for us._ Nominare promised.

And Bucky let the gun fall from his hand, collapsing back into the snow, just hoping Steve would get there before frostbite did.

Steve had Bucky’s best interests at heart. Bucky could say that with certainty. What he could not say with certainty, and what Nominare was always all too willing to point out, was that Steve couldn’t be _sure_ of what exactly was in Bucky’s best interest.

Bucky could be sure that isolating himself from the world, cutting off every tentative friend he’d managed to make, cutting off _Steve,_ and never making any form of human contact again, was not in his best interest. This is where Nominare disagreed. Luckily when you’re rat sized, disappearing from the world and hiding away from everyone isn’t too hard. Only problem being that he was stuck with Bucky and any and all consequences that Bucky would incur for his actions.

 _I hate that mutt._ Nominare piped up once Steve and Zagter had left.

Bucky rolled his eyes holding his hand out to the bench so that Nominare could climb down his sleeve.

“Steve won’t say anything. And neither will Zagter.”

The rat didn’t reply to this but set about grooming himself. _You ought to wash your hoodies more often._

“You know you could hide literally anywhere in this apartment.”

_What? And let you get us killed?_

Bucky didn’t answer that. He’d been telling his therapist about the voice in his head that was always cautioning him against everything, making the world seem even more terrifying than it already was. Her advice had been to challenge it but, on the occasions that didn’t work to try his best to ignore it. Unsurprisingly Nominare _hated_ that advice.

 _Did you eat all the tart?_ Nominare finally piped up.

Bucky grinned, grabbing the largely empty box from the coffee table where he’d purposely left a piece of the sweet crust.

Nominare grabbed it with his little hands eating, nibbling at the pastry.

“It’s not all bad out there.” Bucky told him.

 _Pastry isn’t worth dying._ Nominare responded, but he didn’t cease his meal. Maybe it was start.

* * *

“We’re going out today.” Bucky said. He focused on keeping the words steady and firm. Outside was still a largely uncharted territory, he took trips to his therapist, allowed Steve in but outside? Where anyone could be? In bustling New York where someone could have a knife stabbed between your ribs and your blood could be leaking into your lungs before you even noticed that they weren’t just another harmless face in a never ceasing crowd? “Nominare!” Bucky snapped. The panicked thoughts paused and the feeling of choking ebbed, just a little.

“ _You know I’m right.”_

Bucky closed his eyes. He let his mind drift to other things, the warmth of a cup of hot chocolate between his hands, looping his arm around Steve’s narrow shoulders as they headed to a movie, the taste of the flaky pastry that Steve brought them, the beauty of the trees in Autumn as they turned a brilliant shade of red.

Nominare climbed his way up Bucky’s sleeve and onto his shoulder. “ _Is it worth it?”_

“Yes.” Between the risk of dying and the risk of living like this forever the answer was an unequivocal _yes._

Bucky could feel Nominare steeling his thoughts and gathering up his courage, much like Bucky was.

 _I’ll stay up here,_ someone _has to keep an eye out for danger._

And for a second Bucky felt giddy, his hand reached for the doorknob, they were doing this, they were actually doing this.

The plan was to meet Steve at a coffee shop, the one the pastry was from, apparently it had a fantastic view of the park and it was particularly beautiful this time of year. _Even more crowds._ Nominare griped, but underneath his daemon’s fear Bucky could feel a tiny bit of excitement.

Steve had assured Bucky that the place was only a 15-minute walk from where Bucky was living and the maps system on his phone confirmed that but Nominare and Bucky left the apartment building with an hour to spare. It would give them a chance to scope out the café, make sure it was safe. Steve said it was safe. Bucky reminded himself and his daemon but… _Steve also though SHIELD was safe._

 _What Steve thinks is safe means_ nothing. Nominare griped, but the thought was accompanied by images of Steve from a time long past, small and bony picking fights against those twice his size, Bucky dragging him out of fights with groups of men who probably had more muscle in their left arm than the blond had in his entire body.

They got to the coffee shop without incident, but Bucky could feel his nerves fraying already. _Everything_ was a threat, every rooftop, every window, every person. He’d been getting better but this outside world was _hard._

“Nominare, we’re okay.” Bucky whispered, he knew that some of the thoughts were his own but his daemon’s anxiety was feeding into his thoughts, making his heart thrum against his chest.

Bucky was nonchalant as he scoped out the area surrounding the café, walking around the streets with his hands in his pockets, keeping them warm from the blustering fall wind. He eventually paused under one of the great big trees, standing among the fallen leaves. He watched the other patrons waiting for a sign that one of them wasn’t there to simply enjoy an afternoon treat, he watched those in the park, those in surrounding buildings.

Bucky watched Steve arrive, the man was fifteen minutes early, he looked around for Bucky, scanning the surroundings before moving to a table, he chatted to a waitress for a few moments before she left returning with two menus.

_What are we waiting for?_

Bucky startled for a moment; it was rare that Nominare was the one to suggest movement.

 _The sooner this is over with the sooner we can go back home._ The daemon griped in response but there was less of a bite to his tone than normal.

“Are you going to stay out?” Bucky asked, staying on his shoulder when the daemon was just another of thousands that followed their human counterpart through the city was one thing, being seen by someone who knew him was another.

There was what felt like an age of silence before, _Steve means a lot to me too._ And, of course, he does, daemon and human were inseparable and Steve had been Bucky’s everything for a long time, the one person who could bring him back round, make him more human than weapon for the first time in seventy years.

And that’s _terrifying._

One person shouldn’t mean that much, but really come hell or high water, or, you know, seventy years of being frozen on and off, brain washed, and used as a weapon Steve was _still_ there. So maybe he hadn’t always made the right decision and maybe that had _hurt_. But he was still here.

“Hey.” Bucky greeted, pulling out the chair opposite Steve.

The blond broke into a wide grinned smile, without failure so stupidly happy to see Bucky again.

“Hey.” Steve responded, he then turned his gaze to Nominare, “It’s good to see you again Nominare.”


End file.
